An Italian Babymoon: Part 1 (Venice)

The first stop on our trip was Venice! Every other time I've gone to Europe it's pretty much been go-go-go, which is what I didn't want for this trip since I knew I'd be 6 months pregnant! So our plan was to stay in Venice for 2 days, then head to Vernazza for 6 days, then Rome for 2 days and fly home from there.

Of course, that's not exactly how it panned out. We only ended up with 2 nights (1 full day) in Vernazza instead of 6, and also added in unplanned stops to La Spezia and Florence. But more on that later! First, Venice.

Remember how I said in this post that I always do only carry-on bags to avoid being stuck in a foreign country with just the clothes on your back?! Well, let me just tell you how well that worked out for me here. :-/ Upon arrival in Venice, my luggage - along with half of the plane's - was no where to be found! How does an airline lose half of a plane's luggage?!

So we spent no less than 4 hours at the airport waiting in a ginormous line to report my "delayed" bag to British Airways. This meant our first day in Venice was basically shot between that and jet lag.

I should have kept my sunglasses on like Josh... can you tell we'd been up for over 24 hours at this point?!

I was told my suitcase would be delivered within 24 hours, as it had apparently just missed the plane and was still in London, so it would arrive on the next plane the next day. Since my bag was supposed to be a carry on (there was no more room in the overhead storage bins, so they made me check it curbside), it had ALL of my clothes in it, which left me with literally the clothes you see in the photo above. And a blue jean jacket. Lovely.

Once we got out of the airport, we were excited to explore Venice even though we were exhausted! We somehow found our hotel... I really don't know how we found it! Venice is like a giant maze!! We stumbled upon an H&M (God bless that store! It saved me!) so I bought an outfit to wear the next day. We grabbed some pizza. And then went to bed around 8pm.

^^those hot pink flip flops were the only ones I could find for sale! They obviously went great with all of my outfits.

This is how most of our time in Venice pretty much looked...

... Josh studying the map.

We got off to a rocky start, but Venice won me over with its charming streets.

On day 2 my only goal besides wandering the streets and eating gelato was to take an over-priced ride in a gondola! And hopefully get my suitcase back. Mission #1 accomplished. Mission #2, not so much.

We spent most of the day just getting lost. In a good way. I think really you're kind of always lost in Venice. I loved it.

And then we did our gondola ride in the evening during sunset..

Selfie on a gondola... check!

I was amazed at how tight some of the canals were and I was sure at several points that we were going to crash into a wall, but we never did! Those guys are talented!

And just like that our time in Venice was basically over. A lot of people told us to skip Venice or not to spend much time there, but I really enjoyed it and wish we would have stayed another day or two. There wasn't really a ton more to do there, but I just really liked it there!

The next morning we were off to Vernazza for a nice relaxing week on the beach! Or so we thought....